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WITH the sugarcane crushing season slow to start in Punjab and crushing getting even slower, if farmers are to be believed, the crop may come under pressure from delayed harvesting and dropping temperatures during the next two months. If that happens, it would upset the entire Rabi cycle, particularly wheat sowing.

The sugar millers have their own reason to be careful about the crushing season and its momentum. Given the crop health and acreage, they are hopping to produce five million tons of sugar this year. With domestic consumption at 4.2 million tons, they are worried about 800,000 tons surplus. Where would it go? Would it take the sugar price further down, or would the government buy it or would they be allowed to export it. They beg answers to these questions before fully pressing the accelerator.

At market price assumed at around Rs50 per kilogramme, additional 800,000 tons would mean a clogged credit of Rs40 billion. Combine it with routine delays in payments, and the farmer may see multiplication of their stuckup payments. The millers now plead that the government either purchase the surplus for its ‘strategic reserves’ or open export to clear the glut. Unless, the millers get answers to these questions, they insist on their right to ‘careful’ about crushing.

On the other hand, the farmers’ fears stem from simple crop mathematics; Punjab had sown cane on 1.865 million acres this year and is expecting close to 40 million tons of cane at an average production rate of 560 maunds per acre.

Some 46 mills in Punjab, with a combined crushing capacity of 325,000 tons, are supposed to crush the entire crop in the next 100 days — an near-impossible task, doubly so with slow crushing.

Farmers’ fears are heightened by fast approaching frosty months of January and February. During these two months, the crop becomes vulnerable as the liquid in the frost gets converted into crystals during the freezing nights and de-freezes during the day temperature. The process injures the crop, dropping its sucrose content. The millers refuse to buy such crop at a better rate, causing huge financial loss to farmers.

The crushing season, which should have been at least 30 to 45 days old by now, is hardly a few days old. Of the 46 mills, two are not working and the last one has fired its boiler on December 11. It takes almost two weeks to crush cane after the boiler starts its work. The farmers are asking the provincial government to ensure that at least, from now on, all mills work at full capacity and crush as much as they can before the frost starts biting the crop.

The Punjab government needs to move on this front, with as much zeal as it showed on the cane payments this year. To its credit, its efficiently helped farmers recover their dues, which ran into billions of rupees, before formal start of the crushing season.

Some of the mills were even sealed for failing to pay the farmers and were allowed to start operation only after payment of dues.

But it could not force the millers to start crushing on time, and it is now for it to ensure that there is no ‘crush-slow’ policy. Though allowing export of sugar is a federal subject, it can certainly play a role.

Even with full throttled perations, one estimate is that the mills might not be able to crush more than 10 million tons of cane by mid-January when frosty weather might hit the country, leaving around 30 million tons exposed to vagaries of weather in Punjab.

As an extended causality, the wheat crop sowing is being delayed and it would progressively occupy the land vacated by cane. Close to two million acres for wheat are still under cane and cotton, which is putting a question mark against food security next year.